GIF Jockey is a VJ application that lets you play GIFs at any tempo, forward or backwards. VJs are the people that create and play visuals at concerts in sync with the music. GIF Jockey makes it easy to use GIFs for visuals and lets you match tempo with the tap of a button.
The Collections Screen
The first screen you'll see is the collections screen. You can click on one of the provided collections to load that set of GIFs, or click on "Create" to start with a blank set that you can fill yourself.
When you click on an existing collection, please be patient — GIF Jockey has to open and parse 16 GIFs. This can take up to 5 seconds on a typical Macbook Pro.
The Editor Screen
Regardless of which option you click on in the collections screen, you will then be presented with the editor screen. On this screen, you can import GIFs into the 16 keyboard slots — these are the GIFs you'll be using when you go into play mode. There's a lot you can do with this screen, so I'll cover each feature one by one.
Search
Type a query into the form up top and click the magnifying glass to search GIPHY.com for GIFs. Search results will be presented underneath. You can click "Load more" at the bottom of the search results to load more GIFs. Click on any GIF to load it into a key slot below. Please be patient while a GIF is loading — GIF Jockey has to download and parse the GIF, which can take a few seconds depending on the size of the GIF and the speed of your Internet connection.
Link
Click the chain link icon to open a link field. You can paste a direct link to any GIF on GIPHY and GIF Jockey will import it for you, provided the GIF is not too big (usually GIFs under 4MB work best)
Upload
Click the upload icon to import GIFs from your hard drive(s). You can select multiple GIFs at a time. This is usually a very quick operation but please be patient if you are selecting multiple GIFs. You can also drag and drop GIFs onto the application window to upload them.
Key controls
When a GIF is loaded into a key slot, you can click the icon in the top right corner to remove that GIF.
Start Playing
Once you have successfully loaded your GIFs into the key slots, you can click the green arrow that appears to start play mode.
Note: you can also go back to the collections screen at any time by pressing Backspace or Delete on your keyboard.
The Play Screen
From the play screen, press any of the 16 keys (Q-Y,A-H,Z-V) to play the GIF assigned to that key. The current BPM is displayed in the top left of the screen & starts at the default value of 128. You can adjust the current BPM by pressing the arrow keys, or tap the spacebar in time with music to match it.
You can use Full Screen view in your browser to let GIF Jockey take over your screen. You can plug a projector or TV to your computer and put on a show!
GIF Jockey will play each GIF at a speed that is harmonic with the tempo. This is hard to explain but it makes a lot of sense when you actually see it in action. The alternative is "snapping," which you can toggle by pressing 1. When spapping is turned on, the entire GIF will play on each beat. For some GIFs this is better (like short loops that behave like a kick drum visualizer) but for other GIFs this will just look like a wild, fast mess.
You can toggle "ping pong" with 2. In ping pong mode, a GIF will play forwards, then backwards, and repeat. This is a great way to make GIFs look like they are looping perfectly. You can also change the direction of the GIF with 3, but it is not recommend to combine this with ping pong. Changing the direction of a GIF may seem like a gimmick but it's actually really cool to see Michael Jackson do a forward moonwalk, so try it sometime.
You can change the zoom level with 4. The default is original size, level 2 is fit (makes the GIF large enough to fit on the screen without clipping) and level 3 is fill screen (fills the entire screen even if some of the GIF is cut off). Different zoom levels will look best for different GIFs, but you can also consider using GIFs that are pre-cropped to fit the aspect ratio of your screen so you can set the zoom level from the start and not have to worry about it.
At any time you can stop playing and go back to the editor by pressing Backspace / Delete
Try it and see
The best way to learn GIF Jockey is to just play around with it and practice! You'll quickly find that it's the easiest and probably most fun way to do live visuals, and if you get a chance to be the VJ at a real life concert, well, that's the most fun thing there is to do. Thank you for reading!